• Spoiler alert: this is a post-transmission review of episode one of season eight of Doctor Who, after its broadcast in the UK on 23 August 2014. If you do not want to know what happens in that episode, stop reading now.

The Doctor in Doctor Who is a hero. He is an uncomplicated, always-good-never-bad hero, the kind who saves galaxies with a single flash of his sonic screwdriver. At least, he was. In this first episode of season eight, Deep Breath, the Doctor was not so much all-conquering as all-conked-out.

Peter Capaldi had regenerated as the Doctor at Christmas, but nonetheless stumbled out of the Tardis not really knowing who he (or anyone else) was. A little post-regeneration trauma is traditional: Matt Smith certainly had some in The Eleventh Hour. But Smith went on in that episode to save the world, as is also expected. By the end of Deep Breath, Capaldi was still incapable even of buying a cup of coffee.

The episode started with the Tardis arriving in Victorian London, in the mouth of a rampaging dinosaur that it had accidentally dragged along for the ride from prehistory. The Doctor was confused and disorientated, but managed to unscramble the fact that he is now Scottish.

This being Victorian London, Vastra (Neve McIntosh), Strax (Dan Starkey) and Jenny (Catrin Stewart) were there to meet them. These three minor players created so much padding dialogue – helping extend the episode to an interminable hour and 15 minutes – that they seemed to be a BBC budget cut made flesh.

Having roared a bit for the opening scene, the dinosaur played no real part in the plot. Instead, the Doctor went to bed, and his irritating companion Clara (Jenna Coleman) whinged to the minor trio about how old he looked.

Then there was a long interlude, in which the Doctor regained his sanity, and he and Clara went to a restaurant. (I know that Doctor Who is under no obligation of strict historical accuracy, but 'Mancini's family restaurant'? In Victorian London? Really?)

On and on it went. The only really good bit of the whole episode came when it turned out that all the other diners, and all the restaurant staff, were in fact cyborgs who were after Clara's organs. As all the cyborgs moved jerkily around, it was proper spooky. I enjoyed that bit.

But there then ensued an incomprehensible and (again) long-winded plot about the Doctor and Clara escaping from the cyborgs. I understood little and cared less. And this new Doctor was so feeble that, even when he had his eventual showdown with the cyborgs' leader, we didn't even see him score a decisive victory – all we saw, possibly for the landmark-spotting benefit of American viewers, was the cyborg splatting down from a hot-air-balloon-spaceship on to Big Ben.

Clara – despite being herself perhaps the only character in the history of the show who could rival this new Doctor for insipidity – thought he was insipid. And old. She thought he was very old. The episode's climax – and the big secret until transmission – was a time-travelling phone call from Matt Smith as the old Doctor, to Clara, telling her to accept the new one.

So to sum up: we spent over an hour on a half-baked plot with no proper climax or resolution, and the only main character who had any proper emotional journey was dreary Clara. And, worse, the Matt Smith cameo laid bare the single, central fact that made it all so dull: Matt Smith was still the hero of this Doctor Who. But now, he was a hero who could only phone in once in a while.

'You can't see me, can you?' said Peter Capaldi's Doctor to Clara at the end. 'You look at me and you can't see me. Have you any idea what that's like?'

Well. After this strangely recessive, unheroic, dull season opener, Clara wasn't the only one who couldn't see the Doctor. The audience at home were still waiting for their hero too.